A Possible Agriculture by Carolina Arantes

Private Story

A Possible Agriculture

Copyright Carolina Arantes 2024

Updated Sep 2020

Topics Action, Activism, Agriculture, Business, Capitalism, Climate Change, Documentary, Editorial, Environment, Epidemics, Essays, Food, Freedom, Globalization, Health/Healing, Pandemics, Photojournalism

There is an economic world that has gained new strength since the Covid-19 crisis. It is the one of the small distribution of agricultural products (known as zero km). Fruits and vegetables pass directly from the producer to the consumer travelling by the small trucks that bring the "baskets" ordered by web from home, or through the improvised street or square markets where you buy directly from the pickup truck. And there are some intermediary companies like “La Ruche Qui Dit Oui” who put in touch producers and consumers: the 80 per cent of the income goes to the producer. In this period “La Ruche Qui Dit Oui” has gained something like 300 new producers and 37 thousand new customers all over France.

In France - explains Arantes - the quarantine was declared on 11 March and since then the street markets have been closed and the supermarkets have become one of the most undesirable places to go . But large-scale production went into crisis due to the non-arrival of seasonal workers from Poland, Morocco and Spain. Farmers are in great difficulty and among them there has been the highest suicide rate due to the agricultural business crisis in France.

The small producers, on the other hand, got organised since few years already and, with the covid19, they became an important source of alimentary products and security and, during the quarantine: Production and commerce have even increased sixfold .

This kind of economy has been growing considerably in France and the quarantine proved that it is is much stronger then we suspected: it can supply food for a city as Paris and keep alimentary safety (with food quality and no chemistry) during a pandemic situation as this one. And many people who used to work on urban employs are moving to the small agriculture business in France. As it is the case of Sophie (on the images) whose husband was a business man and they used to live in la Defense (the business neighbourhood in Paris) and are now one very active producers on organics small agriculture. The Saint Thibault dairy farm is good example of this new quarantine economy. The production of this farm situated in the Marne valley Seine et Marne not far from Paris has been multiplied by 6 since the beginning of containment. And this reality is practically the same for all small producers and family farming networks.